Conference wouldn’t be conference without Peter Wheeler’s gonzo guide to surviving the week – get your fill of the best boozers, events and eateries Liverpool has to offer. And keep an eye out for Peter on your travels.
UNCUT: They may be an idiotic rabble: but they’re still family – sort of
24/09/2011, 09:00:26 AMby Kevin Meagher
THE late Roy Jenkins, grand-daddy of “the radical centre” must be turning in his grave. That’s assuming, of course, that the late and never knowingly under-lunched apostle of Lib-Labbery has room to manoeuvre.
His abiding belief was that the schism between socialists and liberals at the start of the twentieth century needlessly gifted decades of political hegemony to the Conservatives. As a former chancellor, his maths were spot-on. The Tories governed for seven decades out of ten. The forces of the centre-left were divided and impotent for two-thirds of the last century.
There are grand theories about why this happened. But here is an altogether simpler explanation. If you turned on your television this week you would have seen them in all their glory. The loons, crackpots and pedants of the Liberal Democrat party. How on earth could we ever work with these people? Read the rest of this entry »
UNCUT: Foundations for future defence
23/09/2011, 02:30:09 PMby Jim Murphy and Michael Dugher
Yesterday Labour launched a report into defence procurement, which we commissioned last year to come up with radical ideas for the future. This is an independent report to the shadow defence team, which we will carefully consider as part of our policy review, which reports to Ed Miliband in 2012.
During a 10 month consultation our review team met with dozens of companies and with countless officials, politicians, trade unions and academics, including taking evidence from overseas. It has been extensive, open and ambitious and is precisely the sort of exercise Labour should engage with in order to reconnect with the country and develop bold proposals for future policy.
Our starting point of this exercise was simple: defence is vital for our nation and effective procurement is essential for our defence. It helps ensure that our forces have the equipment they need when they need it, able to carry out the tasks required of them.
We know that Labour made huge strides in government – the equipment programme was advanced and our personnel were better cared for. We know also that the reforms we introduced to procurement did not lead to lasting change and tackle the systemic problems which built up over different governments’ terms in office.
The review’s focus was to look at how the system could be improved to ensure equipment matches need, planning is effective, procurement is aligned to UK industrial, science and technology policies, and that equipment is delivered on time and to budget. The report meets both benchmarks of success – honest in its analysis and hard-headed in its proposals.
The review proposes taking on the “conspiracy of optimism” – perpetual and consensual under-estimation of cost and time projections in order to agree contracts – by introducing a system whereby projects are cancelled if time and budget estimations are exceeded by 20%. This requires preparedness to invest early to make savings later.
Several proposals begin to shape a new defence industrial strategy. Identifying which capabilities should be based in the UK and which purchased overseas in defence reviews would provide clarity and certainty for industry. It is suggested also that we should apply a new “UK control test” to imports, so we only purchase abroad what we can maintain in the UK, making maintenance cheaper and boosting our industrial base.
Procurement is in essence the process by which frontline need is met, and procurement systems must provide for 100% of frontline requirements without any compromise. Sometimes, however, additional requirements to those needed are added, pushing back delivery dates. The search for the “exquisite” can delay deployment of the excellent and a necessary culture change where design is to cost is a significant insight from the Team.
These are just some of the proposals recommended which we will study carefully as we form our comprehensive review of defence policy. It is notable, however, that in commissioning the review we are now leading this debate. Consider the Tory position. After nearly a year and a half in office, decision after decision has made it strikingly apparent that this Government has no real industrial strategy. Whether it’s on Sheffield forge masters, Bombardier train manufacturing in Derby, the government has given up at home. In their green paper equipment, support and technology for UK defence and security, published last December, their complete lack of ambition was laid bare for all when it stated: “our default position is to use open competition in the global market, to buy off-the-shelf where we can”.
The government says they want to see a private-sector led recovery – we all do – but our real fear is that the government’s laissez-faire approach, and Liam Fox’s almost dogmatic devotion to buying off-the-shelf, could see one of our best performing manufacturing sectors wither on the vine. This comes after an SDSR which has uncosted efficiency savings and has left gaps in both the budget and the equipment programme.
Labour knows that if we are to sustain world-class capabilities at home we need to provide the conditions that support a strong, sustainable defence industry. And why is this so important? Defence manufacturing plays a vital part in our economy and the UK is a world leader in this field. Over 100,000 people (including 25,000 graduates) are employed directly by the defence industry. If you add indirect employment down the supply chain, this number grows to over three hundred thousand, accounting for over 10 per cent of our whole manufacturing base. The industry is also a massive wealth creator for our economy. In 2010 alone, it registered 22.1 billion pounds in turnover and export sales amounted to 9.5 billion pounds – some 43 per cent of total export revenues.
If you were to design, from scratch, an industry-of-the-future that offered large numbers of well-paid, highly-skilled jobs, with large numbers of apprenticeships and huge opportunities for young graduates – an industry that contributed greatly to our export wealth and our national income – you would come up with something that looks very much like our defence industry.
In short, effective and efficient defence procurement is essential for the UK’s security and economy. Failures in the system are organisational not political, but now there is one political party getting to grips with the issues. A strong defence posture is necessary for Britain to be a secure and influential nation. The proposals are in yesterday’s report are an indispensable contribution to the debate about how that is achieved. Labour is listening and learning and is once again a party of ideas. We are facing up to the problems of the past, but looking forward to the future. That is what this defence procurement report was all about.
Jim Murphy is the Labour MP for East Renfrewshire and shadow secretary of state for defence.
Michael Dugher is Labour MP for Barnsley East, a shadow defence minister and parliamentary private secretary to Ed Miliband
UNCUT: The undead Nick Clegg starts to stir…
23/09/2011, 12:00:41 PMby Dan Hodges
Ed Miliband has a nightmare. Forget the sleep apnoea; this is what really keeps him awake at night.
He is walking along the corridor of a dark, abandoned castle. He turns a corner into an imposing room. Like the rest of the castle, the room has been ransacked by angry villagers determined to wreak revenge for the evil that once dwelt amongst them. All that is left is a large black table. Upon the table sits a coffin, lid open.
Ed inches closer, torch flickering. He peers in. Inside there is a pale figure, eyes closed, dressed in a dark morning suit. It wears a gold tie.
Ed is initially gripped by fear. But as the moments pass the fear recedes; replaced by a strange feeling of empathy. Then sympathy.
Poor Nick Clegg. What he did was wrong. So very, very wrong. But he has paid the price. The price exacted from all politicians when their public turns upon them. Now, at last, he has found peace…
“Hello, Ed. I’ve been waiting for you”.
Dear God, he’s alive! He’s sitting up! He’s…
“You’ll find it’s not so bad in there. You have time to stop and think. To come to understand where it all went wrong”.
Ed turns, tries to run. But his feet are like clay. Clegg is out of the coffin now advancing towards him, cape spread wide. He can see razor-sharp teeth glinting in the moonlight; a cold, piercing stare reaching out from dark, empty eyes.
And somewhere in the distance he hears a laugh. A cruel laugh. He knows that laugh. It is David Cameron’s. Then there is silence.
UNCUT: Labour’s Nothing Year
23/09/2011, 08:59:27 AMby Atul Hatwal
While I was looking at the latest polling earlier this week, this melancholic eighties gem, Nothing Ever Happens, by Del Amitri, came on the radio. It couldn’t have been more appropriate.
At the start of the year in this column I highlighted Labour’s poll challenge by tracking responses to three specific questions asked intermittently by YouGov in their daily and weekly polls.
These questions go beneath headline voting intentions to examine voters’ attitudes on what are likely to be defining issues at the next election.
They chart three things – first, how the public feel the government is hitting them in the wallet; second, their view of how the government is cutting the deficit and third, who they prefer as a leader – David Cameron or Ed Miliband.
The answers over the past nine months have involved hundreds of thousands of responses and reveal that the entire Labour party might as well have not turned up for work this year.
Nothing has happened. Nothing has happened at all.
The wallet line tracks voters’ financial self-interest. Because it focuses on peoples’ perceptions of their own financial future, it gives quite a different perspective to the general doom and gloom about the economic position.
UNCUT: The world has changed: but we’re still partying like it’s 1995
22/09/2011, 11:14:07 AMby Peter Watt
Since the general election it is fair to say that the Labour party, probably the left generally, has been struggling with exactly what it is there for. In simple terms, what is it that the Labour party wants to do that the government doesn’t?
The problem has been that there has been a divide in Labour’s ranks over the handling of the economic situation, the cuts, the Blair and the Brown legacy. So when it comes to key questions we struggle for coherent answers. Would we have needed to cut? Should we tax more or less? Should we defend public sector jobs? What about the role of the private sector in delivering the public services? Is there a “progressive majority”? On so many issues there is a divide on the left.
The government, in contrast, seems to lack none of this uncertainty. It makes mistakes, but at its heart it is playing a pretty mainstream tune. Mainstream in the literal sense that its overall message resonates with, well, the mainstream of voters. It’s a message of economic prudence, balancing the books, prioritising spending decision and localising decision making. It celebrates family and tradition but looks to the future. It is comfortable with enterprise and would prefer lower rates of tax.
Those “right wing extremists” have become the mainstream and the Labour party is becalmed on the fringe, apparently struggling to find answers to the problems of the day. The government is a security blanket in a scary world. And that is before we know the full extent of the Eurozone crisis. Read the rest of this entry »
UNBOUND: Thursday News Review
22/09/2011, 08:34:31 AMClegg holds strong
The Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, ended a surprisingly placid party conference by offering himself as the anchor that will keep the coalition government on the centre ground and on a liberal path. Ending a conference dominated by the gathering gloom on the economy, and by whether the Liberal Democrat Keynesians in the government should challenge the Treasury orthodoxy, Clegg promised the coalition “can and will do more” to help a worsening economy. But he said the government would not veer from its commitment to eliminate the structural deficit by the end of the parliament, and admitted this meant a “long, hard road ahead”. Quoting JS Mill, he added: “the only struggles worth having are the uphill ones” and urged his party to lift their spirits, saying: “Never apologise for the difficult things we are having to do.” The party had grown up by going through the door of government, he said, repeatedly claiming his party was “doing the right thing and not the easy thing in the national interest”. – the Guardian
Cameron: we must act quicker to stop suffering
David Cameron will today urge the world to be quicker to take military action to stop states from slaughtering their own people. The Prime Minister will use his first speech to the United Nations to demand that the organisation become less of a talking shop and intervene when people under brutal regimes require its help. In a clear statement of intent following Nato’s successful campaign against Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, Mr Cameron will tell international leaders that the world must be prepared to act again. “You can sign every human rights declaration in the world but if you stand by and watch people being slaughtered in their own country, when you could act then what are those signatures really worth?” Mr Cameron will ask the General Assembly. “The UN has to show that we can be – not just united in condemnation, but – united in action acting in a way that lives up to the UNs founding principles and meets the needs of people everywhere.” – the Telegraph
News International executives knew in 2006
Up to a dozen News International executives, including Rebekah Brooks, were told in 2006 that the Metropolitan Police had evidence that more than one News of the World journalist was implicated in the phone-hacking scandal. New information obtained by The Independentchallenges the timetable, as publicly stated by Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper group, of when and how it first became aware of the extent of illegality at the now-defunct Sunday tabloid. Senior figures from NI have repeatedly stated to Parliament that the company had no significant evidence until 2008 that illegal voicemail interception went beyond the NOTW’s jailed royal editor, Clive Goodman. The new evidence, which is likely to be central to the investigations into the Murdoch empire, reveals that police informed the company two years earlier that they had uncovered strong “circumstantial evidence” implicating other journalists. A senior police officer held a meeting with Ms Brooks in the weeks after the arrest in August 2006 of Mr Goodman and the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. – the Independent
National Trust refuses to back down
The head of the National Trust today sets out “red line” demands before the start of negotiations with the Government to end the row over controversial changes to planning rules. Dame Fiona Reynolds, the organisation’s director-general, is expecting to sit down with Greg Clark, the planning minister, to hammer out a compromise over the next few days. The breakthrough came after David Cameron wrote to Dame Fiona with a personal assurance that the environmental benefits of developments would be assessed before new projects were given permission. Replying in an article today’s Daily Telegraph, Dame Fiona says she is delighted that the Prime Minister’s letter “confirms that the purpose of the planning system has not changed”. Ministers are currently pushing through plans to replace more than 1,000 pages of planning regulations in England with just 52 pages in the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). The change is controversial because it writes into the rules a new “presumption in favour of sustainable development”, which is not defined clearly in the rules. – the Telegraph
UNCUT: The 1980s comparisons are easy to make, but wrong
21/09/2011, 10:07:39 AMby Kevin Meagher
Spending cuts. Unemployment. Economic experimentation.
Royal weddings. Bombing Colonel Gaddafi. Kenny Dalglish and Alex Ferguson.
Tottenham riots. Strikes and marches. Labour stuck in opposition.
Another series of Ashes to Ashes? More like a tour d’horizon of our so-called new politics.
Welcome back to the 1980s – with parallels as brash and ungainly as a first generation mobile phone.
Overseas, an army labours in the rugged Afghan terrain. In the 80s, the Red Army faced the Mujahideen. Their rebranded successors, the Taleban, now take on the Brits and the Yanks.
At home, a million young people languish, outside the reach of schooling, jobs or training. In the 80s this malaise was simply called “youth unemployment”. Now we call them “NEETs”. They remain poor and hopeless either way.
Many are taking to the streets in civil disobedience. Not miners this time, but minors, with young people and even schoolchildren radicalised.
The first group are idealists, blanching at the crippling cost of studying for a degree. The second group are nihilists, making off with hundred quid trainers and a flat-screen telly, an off-key coda to 80s Thatcherite consumerism.
UNCUT: Sunday Review on Tuesday: The Purple Book
20/09/2011, 04:57:33 PMby David Talbot
It is hard to recall now, but 2 May 1997 was a gorgeous spring morning. It felt as though it might have been 26 July 1945, the day that ushered in the first majority Labour government. The country seemed fresh again; there was a sense of something about to be born, a new world, a new start, a new Britain – a new Labour. Even the Conservatives, if you could find one, did not seem to resent the new era or begrudge this young, charismatic prime minister, who had led the Labour party out of 18 years exile to a stunning victory. It was, however, the beginning of his end. The triumphal procession of 1997 led to excited hopes that could never be fulfilled. It was, as George Dangerfield said of the Liberals in 1906, a victory from which Labour never recovered.
But we bought it, all thirteen and a half million of us. Those were the heady days of the new deal, taxes on the profits of privatised utilities, the minimum wage, sure start and five millennium villages (no, me neither). With British troops in Kosovo, even the wars were better.
Now, of course, it is different. The narrative of disillusionment and betrayal is almost beyond challenging. To speak well of him, these days, is to invite scorn, ridicule and worse among Britain’s self-appointed liberal intelligentsia. It is difficult to recall a former prime minister that was last faced with such rancour – much of it, it should be said, coming from his own side. Read the rest of this entry »
GRASSROOTS: The best argument for an elected mayor will come from the people
20/09/2011, 09:35:29 AMby Tom Keeley
On the day, at the weekend, that “yes to Brum mayor” launched its campaign for next year’s referendum, Birmingham Edgbaston CLP held its annual community conference. While not at the campaign launch, I find hard to imagine that the assembled activists and politicians could have made a more compelling argument for an elected mayor than that made through the stories that residents gathered at the community conference told.
Time after time, residents expressed concern over the level of service the council provides. From bin bags to education and from rodents to health, residents felt that the performance of the council was unacceptable. All present could remember a time when the council had not responded to their needs; whether during a council tax enquiry or when trying to secure education for a disabled child or when seeking social care for an elderly relative. Most concerning was not that these problems exist, but that these are the same problems their parents had to contend with. Many admitted that they had stopped even trying to sort problems because dealing with the council was futile endeavour. “The lights are on in the council house, but no one is home”, commented one resident.
There was also a feeling in the room that as a city Birmingham had lost its way. While other cities such as Bristol, Liverpool and Manchester have confidently claimed their place in twenty first century Britain, Birmingham has so far failed. It has failed to address the needs and harness the power of a young, diverse and changing population. It has failed to respond to a changing industrial reality. It has failed to admit that the city we now live in is deeply divided. Rather, it has drifted from year to year led by a council which lives from budget to budget.
Notwithstanding their disappointment, the number of residents present at the community conference is testament to the fact that the people of Birmingham are still willing to give politics a chance. But they need a politics that is accountable to them. Residents felt it unbelievable that the “leader” of Birmingham was selected through internal Conservative party dealings (and that a Labour leader of the council would be selected in the same way). Residents bemoaned the fact that the leader could not in any meaningful sense be held accountable for his performance. “I would have sacked him long ago if I had the chance”, said one lifelong Birmingham resident.
The position of the elected mayor has the potential to bring vision and accountability to the politics of Birmingham. I am not foolish enough to think that one of the largest councils in Europe would suddenly change direction with an elected mayor; its failings go much deeper than that. But, having a person with whom the buck stops, who is accountable, who must consult in order to understand rather than to pander and who can be fired by the electorate for not seeing through election promises, would add much needed impetuous. For too long Birmingham has lived with a Kafkaesque council and mediocre leadership. This is an important election for Birmingham and a great opportunity for politics.
Tom Keeley is an activist in Birmingham Edgbaston CLP.
